I think it's worth noting that I don't think the people in my Japanese classes were inherently stupid, lazy, or anything else of the sort. Merely that they've been spent years being indoctrinated to avoid criticism, and that the end result of this has been them shifting to the easiest possible path through college, rather than trying something because it was hard.
One irony I find in this is that I studied Japanese (along with my Logic and Computation major) because I thought it was hard.
Although, I wish I had some of the lenient teachers you describe :). I didn't have much trouble with memorizing words, grammar rules, etc. But speaking and listening real time I found to be quite a challenge.
And I can empathize with people who had trouble reading Japanese at a 4th grade level :). Wasn't there an article on here a while back about the difficulties of studying Chinese compared to other European languages? I related to much of that.
Dual-majoring in two separate fields is a challenge, no matter what you decide to do, so as a fellow person who seems to kick his own ass too much, I salute you. grin
Japanese is certainly harder for an English speaker than German, French, or Spanish, but even so, it should only take a dedicated student about two years to attain fluency in the language.
I was not a dedicated student, so I've got another year before I think I'll pass the JLPT 1, bringing the total to about six years, which is (somewhat) respectable, given that this is just a hobby.
But the majority of my classmates were majoring in the subject, with many planning on going on to graduate school. Even so, most were utterly incompetent, thanks to an education system that has taught them to avoid effort. I think that, if some of these kids had had their asses kicked, and gotten some real challenges, that they would have done some incredible work.
I actually feel sorry for my teachers; I could see that they wanted to push the students harder, but that they knew that it just wouldn't work, and that they had no power, because it was such a small department at the University. So, if they ticked off too many people, they'd be out of a job. The head teacher, who is a really sweet woman, has had a couple of nervous breakdowns over the past year, partially due to the stress of dealing with her classes.
She's actually one of the motivations for my study tools project, because it should help her out quite a bit.
